


Chromatic

by Nenesha



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, One Shot, POV Second Person, why am I writing fic for a game that isn't out yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7867903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenesha/pseuds/Nenesha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To find, lose, and regain the color of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chromatic

There's something about painting that strikes you deep down in your heart.

  
You'd always had a talent for art. Vivid still life depicting a bowl of fruit done with broken crayons. Skillful landscapes sketched out with a pencil that had laid carelessly abandoned on the floor for days. Even a self-portrait painstakingly rendered in the coral hues of your mother's lipstick on the reflective surface of the bathroom mirror (she had scolded you for that, you remember, but you also remember the way her eyes softened as she traced each line with a stubby fingernail). All served to demonstrate your natural affinity.

  
It wasn't a surprise really when you received your first set of watercolor paints for your sixth birthday.

  
Pages upon pages of thick paper were soon filled. First with the inquisitive tentative dabs of a child dipping their toes into the sea for the first time and then surer lines as you gained confidence wading into the ebb and flow of the gentle tides. Finally, you dove headlong into the creative ocean, the rush of rainbow waves carrying your hand along in clean strokes.

  
It had not been long afterwards though that your parents were blotted out from this world.

  
~~~

  
Instinctively, you knew you had lost something along the way.

  
It wasn't immediately visible to the human eye; a tangible property that could be pointed out with a flick of the wrist and described in a few succinct sentences. It was a quality that defied logical explanation, but drifted to the forefront of the mind of every person that surveyed your work.

  
"Well done! Though it seems to..."

  
"It's technically proficient, I'll give you that..."

  
"Yusuke...your art is so beautiful, but..."

  
None of them could seem to put into words what it was that your paintings lacked and you had long since given up any attempts to rectify it yourself. Perhaps if you simply stopped trying, it would come back to you in the torrential waves of a tsunami.

  
It was a nice thought anyway.

  
Vaguely, you're able to pinpoint the exact point in time in which everything irrevocably changed.

  
You remember being eleven at a gallery showing of your master's. The walls were covered in pieces from his latest collection. But one of them wasn't his, you knew. You knew because you yourself had laid down the greens and oranges and purples that took the shape of forlorn leaves gliding on the wind on that small canvas.

  
When you brought it up with him later, he brushed you off with a frown and an alcohol-drenched rumbling about how he was "acting in your best interest".

  
That would be far from the truth and far from the last time he would pass off your work as his own.

  
Steadily, more and more of your compositions trickled into his collections. A little digging uncovered the fact that you were not the first he had wronged in this way. But the others declined to meet with you out of a desire to not "rock the boat" as it were. They said they owed their livelihood to Madarame, even as their furtive voices betrayed otherwise.

  
So you continue to not speak up; to allow him to so blatantly use you at showing after showing, exhibit after exhibit.

  
It was funny, really. And demoralizing. To see people criticize your paintings for a lack that they could never describe in detail and then in the same breath, praise your master on high for stolen work. Not that they knew it was stolen, of course. But after a time, you wondered if the works he plucked out of your hands possessed the quality you were after and you had merely failed to realize it had been there all along.

  
You scrutinized them for eons and couldn't tell the difference from one grey chain-linked stroke to the next.

  
~~~

  
Madarame had never had your best interests at heart. You had known it for years and yet it is not until now that you accept it.

  
The revelation changes something in you. Suddenly, you can _feel_ again; the dull monochrome haze clears and you drown in bright splotches of golden yellow and royal blue and crimson red. You're saturated with the warmth of happiness, the crush of despair, the pulsation of anger all at once and it's enough to make your head spin.

  
You stare at the canvas in front of you for a moment. Then you reach for your brush and tubes of oil paint with a shaky hand, mixing the colors on the palette with an all-consuming intensity you haven't experienced in ages.

  
Gradually, a fox manifests out of your fervid reverie onto the canvas. Its face outlined in indigo and adorned with short strokes of carmine, all in stark contrast to the cream color of its fur. Its tails swirled with the same carmine, extending to twist and twirl in thin ribbons around the border of the picture.

  
_Inari_ , you breathe in time with the disembodied rattling of chains somewhere below you. Your lips contort in exaltation and you feel as if you might faint from the overflow of power.

  
But Inari has other ideas.

  
It leaps off the canvas with an elegant flourish and circles you not unlike a hunter after prey, sizing you up with an calculating gaze. The smoke billowing off its paws and tails forever undulating in turbulent phantasmagoric images: a boy practicing in a sketchbook, freshly picked flowers held in twin vases on a grave, a man with a ponytail looking over a selection of portraits before freeing one from its place on the wall, a band of thieves vaulting up and down city buildings while leaving their calling card behind...

  
The memories hurt and you blink and divert your eyes to the floor for just a second. Just a second.

  
The chains binding your wrists and ankles to this reality dissipate and when you look back up, it's not Inari in your presence anymore. No, you hold the attention of a pair of golden eyes lined in red and you need to tilt your head back at an almost uncomfortable angle to look at the specter floating before you properly. You smile once again.

  
You'll paint even at the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, no idea why I'm writing fic for a game that isn't out yet, but I had inspiration and actually managed to complete something for once.


End file.
